Focusing purely on the numbers.Opportunity Cost of Renting: No AppreciationLet’s start by understanding the concept of appreciation in the context of real estate.

City has called my maintanance manager twice to go and solve critical water leaks when they can't reach the new owners.And we complain about unfair journalism and government oversight.   

The concept here is to get to the point where your tenants pay for your housing expenses, which should give you some excess income to save and invest.These initial steps could get you to a point where you have a few doors and maybe even have your tenants covering your own housing expenses.Think carefully about selling, it seems counter-productive if you want to be an investor.

The concept of purchasing a multi-family property, utilizing one unit for STR, and eventually transitioning the entire property into an STR setup after a year is quite appealing.My journey began with properties I owned, where I dove into the STR industry.

The concept, though is interesting.

The one-off turned into many one-offs and most important thing I learned from that was how utterly clueless those guys were in just about everything, which shattered my false concept that all investors have some secret-sauce, that i needed that illusive treasure map, no, these were clueless idgets they just simply were fearless to try.

I understand this concept once the option is executed,  but not sure how this would apply prior. 

It's best to delegate the operational tasks for things like management to the local professionals to give you time to focus on the higher level concepts. 

You seem not to perceive the basic concept of why they may not be responding to you.

They are $35 - 60/hr but it saves you the time and headache of figuring out how to book a journal entry for a HUD what accounts to create... oh man it's a pain ha.